Digital chemistry

Apart from sustainability, digitalization is one of the key challenges facing the chemical industry. Digital solutions for all business sectors are more in demand than ever before. The materials and solutions offered by our Electronics business sector contribute to making life a little more digital. And digitalization is playing an increasingly significant role throughout Merck as well.

On the way to a new era

These days, digitalization has become a crucial part of our lives. We can already control household appliances via our smartphones and collect health data using a smartwatch. And in companies, manufacturing processes, logistics and sales would now be unimaginable without digital assistance.

In the chemical industry, digitalization of production and supply chain processes is well advanced. Technologies such as Big Data, augmented and virtual reality and predictive maintenance, all of which are based on large volumes of data, are used there. Compared with telecommunications or retail companies, the chemical industry is still in the midst of its digital transformation but we’re making progress. According to a study by the consulting firm EY, executives in the chemical industry expect all roles within their companies to continue to change considerably during the course of digitalization – whether in research and development, sales, order management, or customer service. Overall, around 90% of those surveyed expect evolutionary, revolutionary or even disruptive changes in the next three years. It is not without reason that the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI), in its “Chemistry 4.0” study, is seeing the dawn of a new era for the industry, in which companies are fundamentally changing their products, processes and business models. This includes using internal and external data to optimize operating processes and developing new digital business models.

Digitalization at Merck

Not only our Electronics business sector is playing a key role in digitalization by offering materials and solutions for the semiconductor industry. The application and scale of digitalization at Merck itself is diverse. For example, we have already started to network our production systems digitally and create a central information platform, which employees can access using their smartphones. This has already been introduced in our polyproduction in Darmstadt, for instance. This is where we manufacture liquid crystals, OLEDs and pharmaceutical products. As a result, every employee can access information in production and can detect defects early. Additionally, we’re increasingly relying on predictive maintenance in production, which was the topic of one of my blog posts just a couple of weeks ago. This is currently being used in our centrifuges, which purify liquid crystals and effect pigments. They have been equipped with sensors, which record and analyze vibrations and changes in the power supply and then feed this data centrally into a network to make it possible to plan targeted maintenance.

Using digitalization to help against the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has made it clear that digitalizing production processes is not enough. Never before have we depended on digital applications for collaboration as much as we do now. In a very short time, companies had to switch to remote work and digitalize processes that were previously still performed in person.

At the same time, the health and safety of our employees was our top priority. That’s why we at Merck developed a software solution, which digitalizes, rationalizes and automates a significant proportion of the Covid-19 testing procedure for employees. The initial version of the software is intended for internal use and focuses on administrative tasks such as automating e-mails, test invitations and medical history.

Infrastructure and competencies of the future

One important prerequisite for making full use of digital technologies is a functional digital infrastructure that includes extensive glass fiber and 5G networks. However, digital training is just as important. Our professional activities and thus the requirements that are placed on us are changing. The German Mining, Chemical and Energy Industrial Union (IG BCE) and the German Federation of Chemical Employers' Associations (BAVC), the latter of which I am President, recently published the “Future Skills Report Chemistry” for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. This analysis was carried out with the aid of Big Data and artificial intelligence and it shows which skills will increasingly be required of chemical industry employees in the future. The trends that already have a great deal of influence on the world of work or are likely to in the future range from cyber security and machine learning to automation and robotics. For example, today, one in five job postings requires skills in data science and analytics.

It is important for the chemical industry to keep at it and drive forward digitalization even beyond production. To do this, the developments of the coming years must be recognized early. At Merck, we are helping to secure the basic prerequisites for digital living with our materials and solutions. At the same time, we’re driving the digitalization of our company through innovative ideas and concepts.